Social Media: The New Town Squares

Social Media is proving to be the most important aspect behind the success of any business, and it’s also turning out to be the most misunderstood and misused platforms ever. Mark W. Schaefer has dedicated a whole book to it called Social Media Explained.

More often than not, the reason behind success is not how much you know about the problem, but how you approach it. That is one of the main reasons why some businesses don’t find success in the social media age – because they approach social media the way they did mass media, but in reality they should treat it like a town square in old age Europe.

Here’s why:

Characteristics of a marketplace in 1800 AD at a marketplace in England

Highly Personal

Everyone knew everyone, and everyone was connected. The shopkeepers had a very personal connection with their clients. They probably knew their birthdays, and what they purchased on a daily basis by heart.

Feedback was immediate

An extension of the first point, feedback was immediate in the 1000s, you didn’t have to wait for ages to get feedback on your products, you would get get it the minute it reached the consumer. They knew you personally and could approach you any minute to let you know what they liked or didn’t like about your product.

Word of mouth

Word spread like wildfire in those days, people would be talking about your product even before it was out. Your entire reputation as a producer depended on what people thought of you, and everyone would have opinions on everything such as how you did business, what you sold, and how you treated your customers. If you wanted your business to succeed, you had to treat your customers right, because they were the ones who would get you more business.

Need to be socially connected

The town squares in the 1000s weren’t just marketplaces, they were places for social gatherings; people had an innate need to be socially connected to one another, and the town squares were where people met up and caught up with each others’ lives.

Characteristics of Social Media

Highly Personal 

Everyone is connected and on an even larger scale, you can find clients in a different country with just a click. Business owners and companies have built personal connections with their clients digitally. Any big retailer you’ve done business with will send you an email on your birthday. An average college student get messages from Snapchat, LinkedIn, Old Navy, Forever 21, Target, and whichever company they’ve decided to do business with. On top of that, they also keep a record of what their customers buy for future reference and offer suggestions at timely intervals to hold onto the interest of their customers.

Feedback is immediate

Feedback is immediate with social media. People can put up reviews of your product within minutes of consumption, and there are a thousand platforms to do it on like Yelp, Google, Amazon, and Fandango. There will be people blogging about it and putting up pictures of your product.

Word of mouth

Social media is highly personal, and because feedback is immediate, word of mouth will spread like wildfire. Depending on which direction it blows in, it will make or break your reputation.

There is an innate need to be socially connected

This generation has a tremendous need to be socially connected, and social media is the number one place to be. Everyone is online looking at what other people are doing, and putting up their own personal information.

Sometimes, you just have to go back in time to know how to market your business successfully in the age of social media. One of the best analogies for this is the Flintstones and the Jetsons. They were set in different ages, but they were set the same. The same can be said about selling in the social media age and personal selling in 1000 AD. This isn’t only about B2B or B2C anymore, it’s about P2P (person to person).

Mark Schaefer says in his book, that mass media was the worst phase businesses and consumers could have seen, because it built a huge divide between the buyers and sellers. One of mass media’s biggest misgivings is that they made businesses impersonal, but social media made it possible to add a softer edge to your business. At the end of the day, people want a personal connection, the feeling that they are being heard and what they say will make a difference in the grander scheme of things. People don’t want to open their Facebook or Twitter and see a pamphlet of what you’re selling. They want to see what you actually do at work, contests, and shoutouts. They want to feel closer to your company and workers, and giving them that is what will make your business more successful.